Dialing For Dollars First Winning Numbers Drawn In Tribe’s International Phone, Internet Lottery
The Coeur d’Alene Tribe, gambling that customers will shrug off long-distance charges, has launched its telephone lottery.
The phone lines opened Jan. 9. The first winners were picked at the US Lottery headquarters Tuesday. There was no jackpot winner.
“We’re legal, we’re regulated - and we’re for real,” gaming manager David Matheson said at a celebration that blended ancient drumming with show-biz glitz.
The Coeur d’Alenes have an agreement with the state of Idaho that allows for the telephone lottery.
But when they tried to launch it three years ago, they were stymied by other states that have lotteries. Attorneys general in those states told long-distance carriers, such as AT&T and Sprint, that providing a toll-free long distance number to the tribe would break the law.
The Coeur d’Alenes sued AT&T in tribal court and won. The phone giant then appealed in federal court, where a decision is pending.
Meanwhile, long-distance phone rates plummeted to 10 cents per minute or less.
“As the rates came down, it became less of a factor than we feared initially,” Matheson said.
The lottery phone number is 208-665-3866. It costs $1 per play, with a minimum charge of six plays.
People can also play the “Super 6 Weekly Draw” lottery over the Internet. The tribe’s gambling Web page, www.uslottery.com, has been operating since March. It also offers four other games.
Under federal law, tribes are able to offer whatever forms of gambling are legal in a given state.
The Coeur d’Alene Tribe is offering its phone and Internet games in 33 states that have their own lotteries, but so far has avoided three others that were likely to sue: Minnesota, Florida and Connecticut.
That’s going to change, Matheson said.
“We think we’re legal, and now we’ll just have to accept any challenges that come,” he said.
In the Super 6 game, players choose six numbers between 1 and 49.
If they pick all six, they get $1 million or more. If they match 5, they win a percentage of the pool divided by the number of winners, about $2,000 to $3,000. If they match 4, they win $30 to $50; match 3, and they win $2.
At Tuesday’s first drawing, 87 people won $2. The four players who matched four numbers won $45.
There were 7,000 players. Because lottery officials expected a low number of contestants, they gave an additional $5,000 to the first winner.
That player happened to be from Switzerland.
“Ten to 15 percent of the Internet players are international,” said Mike Yacenda, president of UniStar Entertainment Inc.
UniStar, a Connecticut subsidiary of Executone, was hired by the tribe three years ago to manage the telephone logistics and lottery. It’s the company’s first experience with a gambling operation, or a tribe.
Initially, the enterprise was called the National Indian Lottery. When the Internet operation was launched, the name was changed to US Lottery to have a more global appeal, said Yacenda.
“It’s a product available for export,” said Yacenda.
He noted that in 1996, global lottery profits were $114 billion. The U.S. piece of that was $40 billion, he said.
The Internet version of US Lottery has gotten favorable reviews in the United Kingdom and other European countries, he said.
Half of the profits from the Super 6 lottery will go back into the prize pool, Matheson said. The rest go into tribal social, educational and environmental programs.
“The odds of winning are 13.8 million to one,” said Yacenda. In contrast, he said, the odds of winning the multistate Powerball lottery are 80 million to one, “and that’s not available by phone or over the Internet.”
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